A character from the "Yo Frankie!" 3D video game in Edit Mode, showing edges and faces.
The model is "(c) copyright Blender Foundation: apricot.blender.org".

Early versions of Blender supported faces only with three edges (triangles) or four edges (called quads). However, faces with five or more edges (so-called N-gons) are supported in Blender starting from version 2.63. Before Blender 2.63, for creating a new face you'd had to select 3 or 4 verts in order and then create the face, repeating the process for every new polygon needed. Version 2.63 and following versions with BMesh, you can create N-gons, regardless the number of verts.[1]

Examine a 3D video game or CGI character for a while. Believe it or not, it is made up of little faces joined together. With modern technology, of course, there can be a lot of faces, so they may be tiny and hard-to-see. Surfaces that appear curved are composed of very many individual flat faces.

When you edit objects in Blender, you'll see every vertex and edge. However, vertices and edges are never rendered; only faces are rendered. The purpose of vertices is to provide 3D control points for faces.

While it's possible to construct 3D meshes vertex-by-vertex, this is rarely done. However, doing it once the hard way will help you appreciate the powerful modeling tools built in by Blender. Along the way, you'll learn about Edit Mode and the grab tool, both of which you'll need in the next module.

First, summon the default cube:

Launch Blender.

If the NumLock indicator on your keyboard is unlit, press NumLock so that numpad hotkeys will work properly.

Because you loaded the factory defaults, the 3D manipulator will be enabled. For mesh editing, it helps to turn the manipulator off:

Make sure the 3D View window is active.

Press Ctrl + Space to toggle the manipulator on or off. You also could turn it on/off with the manipulator button on the 3D View header.

In Object Mode, the cube will look like this.

Because you just loaded the factory defaults, Blender should be in Object Mode with the default cube selected.

In order to modify the cube's mesh, you must put Blender into Edit Mode. (Edit Mode is a special mode for making changes to a single object.)

Press Tab once to go into Edit Mode on the cube.

In Edit Mode, the cube will look like this.

Edit Mode indicator in the 3D View header.

Tab puts Blender into Edit Mode only if it's in a different mode to start with. If it's already in Edit Mode, Tab returns it to whatever mode it was in previously. So pressing Tab a second time would put Blender back into Object Mode.

Edit Mode has three (sub-)modes for selecting vertices, edges, and faces. Because you just loaded the factory defaults, you should be in Vertex select mode. In Vertex select mode, vertices show up as yellow, black, or white dots when they're selected and as pink dots when they're not. Because you just loaded the factory defaults, all eight vertices of the cube should be selected.

In Blender 2.59/2.60 the vertex(ices) that are either unselected/selected are the following colors: Unselected will be black; Currently selected will be white; Already selected (other than the current selection) will be orange. Also note that these colors correspond to edge selections as well.

To clear the boards for your first model, delete all of the cube's vertices:

Press X

A "Delete" menu will pop up. Choose Vertices.

Now you can repeat the previous exercise using mouse and monitor instead of pen and paper.

After step 3

Create a vertex by clicking with Ctrl + LMB .

Create another vertex. Blender will automatically join the two vertices with an edge.